The Future of Shooters

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Some of the biggest names in shooters gather to talk about what's next for the genre.

By Steve Butts

Like most games conferences, the Triangle Games Conference is a great link between game creators and those who want to become game creators. Though all of the panels and lectures have been interesting, the one that stood out the most to me was The Future of Shooters. Gathering together five of the leading names in the genre, the panel explored the questions of how shooters will evolve in terms of content, character and control over the next five years.

The panel was moderated by Epic's director of operations John Farnsworth. He was joined by Juan Benito (co-founder and current creative director of Joystick Labs), Patrick Sebring (lead technical designer at Atomic Games), Jeff McGann (creative director on RedStorm's unannounced project), and Shaun McCabe (production director at Insomniac). The panel shares a rich history, and many of them have worked together on titles from Red Storm's Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon series as well as Atomic's ill-fated Six Days in Fallujah.

To kick things off, Farnsworth turned to the question that most gamers are eager to answer: which is your favorite shooter of all time? Though McCabe, along with Benito, was quick to cite Uncharted 2: Among Thieves as a recent favorite, his all-time favorite shooter remains Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando, which was what eventually drew him to Insomniac and gave him the chance to work on Up Your Arsenal. Sebring called out the original Half-Life as an early favorite but revealed that it was Counter-Strike that really drew him in. He still hosts servers to this day.

Left 4 Dead's approach to coop is the most promising direction for new shooters.

McGann, searching for an alternative to the Ghost Recon projects he was currently working on, found himself enthralled by Unreal Tournament 2003, particularly for its rich modability. Benito jumped in to praise the original Quake, joking that he spent more time on that game than he spent in college. The title's unique combination of 3D graphics and fluid controls won him over.

Farnsworth next asked which game elements or features are going to be the most important in moving the genre forward. Is it story? Characters? Interactions? Multiplayer? Relevance to contemporary events? Without exception, all the panelists agreed that cooperative play is the most important element in developing and sustaining the popularity of the shooter genre. McGann says it's part of leveling the playing field for players like himself who aren't competitive enough to enjoy adversarial play. Co-op also allows players to create an unscripted story where their own actions determines what happens.

McCabe not only agrees but takes things one step further. Left 4 Dead, he claims, really has no story. Described purely as a single-player game, Left 4 Dead doesn't think it sounds very appealing to him, but the cooperative gameplay is the hook that makes it all work. Given the success of Left 4 Dead and other cooperative shooters, it's no longer an optional feature; it's something that consumers demand. Benito was hopeful that cooperative play might extend to other platforms and even speculated that one day iPhone or Facebook games might have a cooperative tie-in to more traditional console games.

How can publishers get the general public to accept content drawn from real life?

That said, members of the panel were also quick to point out that cooperative play still needs interesting characters and settings. Left 4 Dead succeeds as a cooperative experience in part because the characters are iconic and possess a look and language that makes them relatable. The balance is in presenting enough personality but not so much that the characters are no longer empty vessels for the players to fill.

Farnsworth next asked which settings are likely to be relevant in shooters five years from now. Nearly all of the panel members agreed that real world events will continue to dominate content. Benito suggested that the controversial nature of simulating real operations and real war zones requires a careful and responsible approach. Though designers will have to abstract the rules of combat and dramatize the action, the industry needs these real world settings in order to create meaningful shooters. Without them, we're left with the empty exercise of simulating context-free violence. McGann cautions that although game levels might be ripped from the headlines, war is best used as a backdrop to tell stories about characters

McGann agrees that gamers want something that connects with their own experience, but wonders how you can stay fresh. "How many games can you play," he wonders, "where you're just killing terrorists?" During focus tests on Red Storm's unannounced project, McGann was surprised that, without any supporting narrative context, the focus testers all referred to the enemies as terrorists. There was no indication of that within the game, but gamers today automatically assume that enemies must be terrorists.

Benito concedes that it's overdone, but also that it's a natural expression of the political zeitgeist. As a mirror of the times, games are naturally going to reflect the current situation in the world, and as long as killing terrorists makes players feel important and heroic, they will continue to be featured as enemies.